Days and Daze….

Day 20 – Part One, I hope…

3 Hours and 40 mins… The amount of sleep I got last night… Time for drastic measures, My therapist suggest I journal or “brain dump” all the stuff in my head that i am fixating on, so I can get on with other things… With that in mind I hopping if I do this now, I will be able to post a Part II tonight having done some stuff that matters…

A line is made up from individual points… Unless it is a line of people complaining that life didn’t work out how they wanted, then it is all the same point… Welcome to the real world you might say? Fuck you, I will wittily respond.

Pretty sure I didn’t look at the brochure that said “be a forty year old, sole parent, battling his weight, bonus servings of depression and a malaise that comes from feeling like you will never achieve anything?”… Actually I am damn sure I didn’t…

I didn’t request an ex-wife that really wanted children, so much that she sought out the best fertility doctor in Queensland and waddled around with greasy peseries of hormones she needed to insert to carry a pregnancy to full term… I can only believe that in her heart she really wanted a baby? That no one would do all the tests and trauma she went through otherwise? This same woman who went through all these struggles to have children, at some point after decided that having children was actually the easy part, being a mother however was not… So instead of facing motherhood with the same determination and sacrifice as she had with the pregnancy, she gave up… An she became the stereotype of a “single dad”…. Sign the child support check and see the kids every second weekend, and get back to having the life you had before kids…

Now I must admit it is hard to remember if I was all keen about the baby thing, or just agreeable because I thought it was something she wanted? I don’t remember being all “I want children!!!” But maybe I was?… But I don’t think it ever occurred to me that I would one day be the stereotypical “single mother”…

rust me it is no fun being a single mother, when you are a guy… The job sucks if you are a woman, but at least people are kind of used to it.. People can’t seem to process a sole parent father… I have actually had people assume my ex-wife was dead, it was easier for them to process the situation that way… For all the pretense of sexual equality and gender role neutralness, society at large still holds some things as universal truths… A mother will lift a burning car for her children, and fight tooth and nail to have them safely beside her… I don’t blame people for that belief, I have it… And I suspect it is the cause of most of the anger in my life… This is not an ex-bashing post, this is a “I need to understand and let go of this thing post”… I get angry at my ex-wife, no denying it, I am not sure if she understands why?… She probably has no idea how much time and effort I put into painting her as a good person to the children, of little white lies, the distractions I provide to derail them when that start asking questions about “why mum is to busy to see them”… So maybe that is why I tend to lose my temper when thoughtless txt messages are sent, or accusations that I am not doing the right thing by the kids… Right now I still have a two week old txt going around in my head, where she stated that she was a wonderfully reasonable person that wouldn’t mind having the kids a few extra days over the 108 she was having them according to the child support agency….. I am not sure how she came up with that figure? By my (admittedly remedial) maths it is closer to 60?… I can only assume she used the same maths that allows her to say she has the kids for 2 weeks of holidays a year, technically true… But if you take those weeks separately and only on weeks when you were going to have them for the weekend anyway, your 2 weeks of holidays a year are in fact 8 days…

Last time we “spoke” (ie exchanged texts), she brought up sending the kids to school) she doesn’t share my lazie fair attitude to education… And last visit to my therapist threw the same thing at me… Although for different reasons.. She stated that if all my time and effort is focused on being a father/teacher etc what happens when that is no longer my “job”… What will there be to keep the depression at bay when the duty is gone? I put all my available energy into a role that will, if I have done it right, will one day be obsolete… Will I then be some sad lonley guy that sits in a room waiting for the kids to call occasionally? Will I have cut myself off from the world and those in it by being some kind of marte on the pire of parenting? At this rate yes….

So l will consider school, which is just not a matter of “hey look there’s the public school, off you go”… I have one child that would fine… And one child that will not cope… I cannot conceive of putting my son into a school that will turn him into the grey miserable boy that he was 6 months ago… I accept the fact that I am doubting my ability to homeschool him through the highschool years, my own performance at highschool was less than stellar… The idea of sending him to one school for year six, and then onto the local highschool terrifies me, I fear he would be eaten alive there… I am aware no school is perfect… And sometimes it feels like choosing the least worst… It would be nice to be able to discuss this with their mother… But that would just end in fights… So instead I will look at scholarships, budgets and even possibly begging letters… It’s a strange world that makes you choose between buying a house and getting your children an education that won’t scar them for life…

There is also a selfish aspect to me considering school again, it is hard to be a 24/7 sole parent, adding teacher to job description makes it harder… There is only so much energy one person can expend in a day, and I fear that somedays the tank is empty by 3 in the afternoon… There is a gruffness in my replies sometimes that I don’t like, a frustration that makes me fell like a failure as a parent and a person…

It seems I have developed a kind of victim mentality about interactions with my ex-wife, to the point that my therapist had suggested that I keep all interactions with her to a minimum and avoid face to face contact if possible… In fact she gave me suggestion for a few people… Not sure it is helping that much… Maybe because anger was the only emotion I had left that actually functioned?… Without Joy, hope etc maybe anger is the fuel… Well thats not a good thing… Not healthy for me or those in my care… So hopefully this whole, verbal diarrhoea is better out than in will help… As I am kind of sick of sounding like a whiney bitch, and even I feel like tell myself to harden the fuck up….

So today I will try not worry about these things –

My ex-wife

Money

School and its associated fees

The dishes in sink

How I am doing as a parent

Loneliness

Not making enough progress

First world problems in general

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2 thoughts on “Day 20 – Part One, I hope…”

For years I’ve used journals as a brain dump too and it seems to help. Let’s off a little of the steam and usually by the end of a painful entry something comes to mind that I can be grateful for. And even a smidge of gratefulness can do some good…like a lit candle in a dark room allowing you to see things a little more clearly. All this to say I hope you keep journaling. P.S. I have found James Pennebaker’s “Writing to Heal” book a good resource.

Thank you 🙂 I will check out the book… I guess blogging has always been a bit of a brain dup for me… but usually only after I spend all day (or night fixating on things)… So maybe I need to be a bit more immediate about getting things out of my head…